404 ANNUAL REGISTER, 1813. 



DECTIEE OF THE REGENCY, AD- 

 DRESSED TO THE NUNCIO. 



The Regency of the kingdom 

 expected that your excellency, 

 liaving regard to the public charac- 

 ter of a legate of his holiness, with 

 which you are accredited to a na- 

 tion equally heroic and religious, 

 would have kept within the limits 

 of that character, forbearing to 

 abuse the consideration with which 

 the Spanish government has con- 

 tinued to acknowledge you in an 

 embassy, the legitimacy of which 

 was rendered very doubtful by the 

 captivity of the holy father and of 

 our king Ferdinand the 7th as 

 well as from other circumstances. 

 His highness relied on the strong 

 motives which might and should 

 have regulated your private con- 

 duct. But he has now beheld 

 with surprise the steps which your 

 excellency has taken on the af- 

 fair of the Inquisition. When 

 on the 5th of March you pre- 

 sented a note to the president 

 and supreme council of regency, 

 that very day, as archbishop of 

 Nicea, you wrote to the chapters 

 of Malaga and Granada, and to the 

 archbishop of Jaen, exhorting 

 ihem, especially the two first, to de- 

 lay, and even refuse their acquies- 

 cence in the decrees which his ma- 

 jesty had issued concerning theesta- 

 blishment of tribunals for the de- 

 fence of the faith instead of the 

 abolished Inquisition ; and for the 

 publication, in the parish churches, 

 of a manifesto of the Cortes. Your 

 excellency v/as not contented with 

 writing such letters as might, 

 through the perversion of public 

 opinion, lead to a schism upon 

 that delicate and important sub- 

 ject. Your excellency had also 

 the boldness to betray that secrecy 

 which you had recommended in 



your note, at the same time that 

 you enjoined it to the chapters 

 and bishop, in order that they 

 might look upon you as the author 

 of a scheme which tended to stop 

 the exercise of the temporal autho- 

 rities, and promised them to trans- 

 mit intelligence of every circum- 

 stance, as it should take place, 

 which might contribute to regu- 

 late your combined plans for the 

 future. A conduct so contrary to 

 the law of nations — a conduct by 

 which, overstepping the limits of 

 your public character, your excel- 

 lency has availed yourself of the 

 immunity which that character en- 

 joys, that you might, as a foreign 

 prelate, organize the resistance of 

 those individuals, who by reason 

 of their rank, should be true 

 examples of subordination, cannot 

 be looked upon by his highness 

 with indifference, much less when 

 you represent that conduct as an 

 important and indispensable service 

 due to religion, to the church, and 

 to our most holy father, whose 

 authority and rights, according to 

 the opinion of your excellency, 

 are wounded by the decrees in 

 question, without their favouring 

 thereby the episcopal dignity. His 

 highness is horror-struck at the 

 consideration of the fatal conse- 

 quences which threatened the state, 

 and which naturally must have fol- 

 lowed the advice which your ex- 

 cellency has given, supported as it 

 is by arguments of such an inflam- 

 matory nature. But although his 

 office of guardian of the state and 

 defender of religion fully autho- 

 rized him to order you out of these 

 kingdoms and seize upon your tem- 

 poralities, his desire of evincing the 

 veneration and respect which the 

 Spanish nation has always had for 

 the sacred person of the pope, and 



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